Rating: 
Summary: Probably the book I use most
Review: I have been playing chess for 14 years now and got this book about a year ago. I still look at it a lot to freshen up on how to get the early advantage against almost any opening. I found it especially helpful with the Sicillian game.
Rating:
Summary: Chess Openings: Traps and zaps
Review: I think that this book teaches a lot of things about chess openings. It goes through many intresting opening and is not at all boring. It deserves 5 stars because it shows what to do if such a piece moves this way but allows you to also prepare yourself for some of the traps you get with that particular opening.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I think the problem with this book is that the traps/zaps theme is too simple for advanced players and too narrow for beginners. You can gleen some of the opening moves from this book, but Pandolfini should've had a summary after each opening section detailing the basic lines. It would have broken up the monotony of the book too.There is undoubdtedly some value to the basic drill of looking at a chessboard and picking the best move. But even here the basic format often gives it away: Pandolfini basically tells you the your opponent has blundered and that there's a fork or pin coming up. You know what to look for, which doesn't happen in real chess.
Rating:
Summary: Frustrating to study: numerous typos and erroneous diagrams.
Review: I'd barely recommend this book and its sequel, More Traps and Zaps. Each "trap" is presented as a board diagram that the reader is to solve. I soon became frustrated because many of the diagrams are erroneous, as are the corresponding move lists and, in some cases, solutions. After about 5 such occurrences, I no longer knew whether I was having trouble solving the problem, or whether the problem was insoluble because the given diagram was wrong again. Pandolfini is a great teacher, but he needs an editor like nobody's business.
Rating: 
Summary: Does not meet its stated goals.
Review: In the introduction, Pandolfini explains that this is not a book full of opening lines "that charts numerous moves, with little or no commentary." Unfortunately, this book does not provide a useful analysis of the openings to the amateur player. Instead, an extremely bad position is shown where the opponent has made one or more blunders followed by Pandolfini's explanation of how to exploit the blunder. This book also suffered from numerous printing errors. There is an error in the very first diagram! This book is a fun exercise in how to destroy a weaker opponent, but helps little to improve your game.
Rating:
Summary: A Fundamental Mistake
Review: Joe Blow rates this as a terrible book. He does note your opponent must be terrible and fall into your traps in order to for you to pull these traps on your unsuspecting opponents. The average player does not understand the correct ways to improve, and perhaps this is why he may remain an average player all his life. My first two books were trap books. All the best chess teachers (GM Evans, Alburt; SM Smith, etc.) agree that tactics are the first thing you should master, if you really want to improve. You can only learn to play Positional Chess after you have mastered, The Language of chess ... and that is TACTICS! I'll tell a story. A player, who had been playing tournament chess for at least 5 years and held a 1600+ USCF-rating; came to me and asked me to teach him an opening. He said he was willing to pay. I told him the first step was to learn all the traps in his opening. MEMORIZE them. Then learn the basic moves and some of the ideas behind them. Etc. We sat down at chess club. I did not have any books with me, so I began showing him 20-30 traps that I knew of that opening from memory. At first my prospective student was writing everything down. Then later, I noticed he had stopped writing. He finally gave up and despair, paid me and went home. The point of this story? Mastering the tactics are a fundamental step, one of the very first and most basic steps, on the road to improvement. Most players are not willing to do this! Joe Blow isn't looking to improve. Don't look at this book by Pandolfini as "Easy Ways To Win." Look at this book as the first step on the road to improvement. You had better learn ALL the traps in the Opening you play. I can guarantee your opponent knows them. Especially if you are playing in tournaments or rated play! I have both of these books (Traps and Zaps) in my personal library. Don't you think they belong in yours?
Rating:
Summary: Just Awful - An Abuse of Trust.....
Review: My father (an avid fisherman) used to say to me "Son, there are two types of fishing lures - One type is designed to catch fish, the other type is designed to catch fishermen". This book is a near shameless attempt to market useless information at unsuspecting new players who don't really know what it is they need to learn. These 'traps and zaps' type books are designed more to separate you from your hard earned dollars with snazzy marketing promises than they are designed to teach you anything usefull. Pandolfini gives really unlikely positions where your opponent would have had to commit a string of gross blunders, and then asks you to find the 'winning move'. I suppose that this book may have some small amount of tactical merit (emphais on small), but it does a poor job at that and really does almost nothing to teach the student about how to open a chess game. If you are new to chess, study simple tactical patterns first, and then learn some introductory positional play and basic endings. Microsoft press publishes a fine 'winning chess' series that is well written and instructive - and will do far more for the novice player than anything that Pandalphini has ever published could. The majority of Pandalphini's works should only be handled with a pair of 40 foot tongs and a radiation suit. He and Eric Schiller are chief contenders for the crown of 'Most Shameless, Misleading, and Least Value Providing Chess Instruction of the Decade'.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a crime of chess literature
Review: Pandalfini profits from preying on the naivety of enthusiastic but uninformed players wishing to improve their game. Like feeding bowls of sugar to a child, he definately gives the novice what they want but nothing of what they need. The "traps" he shows in his books only seem to occur after BOTH SIDEDS have commited a string of blunders. In his attempt to create some examples of cheap winning shots (which is how the amateur thinks all games should be played) he winds up encouraging his readers to play for positions that will damage their game. Pandalfini refers to his system as "crime and punishment" - if there were any truth to this phrase he'd be spending his time writting his next chess book from a prison cell as a punishment for the crime of getting this book into print. Please do yourself a favour and save your money. Get a book that explains the principles of good opening play such as Ruben Fine's "The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings". If you have already bought this book, then at least use it strategically... give it to someone you would like to beat the next time you play them.
Rating: 
Summary: Not very helpful
Review: Personally I found this book to be of very little help in improving my chess game. The author targets the book for beginners and writes it in an attempt to teach them how to aviod opening blunders and how to capitolize on your enemies mistakes. The only problem is, the book's examples are way too specific and each example is full of terrible moves. Every chess game played has a mistake or two, but in this book the author points out opening games where in 10 moves or less a handful of mistakes have already taken place. The bottom line for this book is, its too simple for advanced players and too specific to help beginners.
Rating:
Summary: Awful Misleading...
Review: The name of this book is Awful misleading to say the very least... You would think that it would go over common traps that actually happen in games... Not just toss in a string of blunders and say oh this is the move etc... What amazes me is that people that gave this negative review would rate it as high as 3 stars... That is saying this is an average chess book, which it is not... You would think just seeing people state about error on first diagram would be enough... If you can't even start a book out right, what good is it... Books like this trap people into never getting better... How can you expect a novice to get better with so many typos?? If someone barely knows what they are doing, printing mistakes is only gonna make matters worse... Trust me you can spend your money on much better books... Your better off getting .pgn files of certain openings... Check out those games see if anyone falls into any traps... Get a book like Mammoth Book of Chess or even Emms Ultimate Puzzle book... Or Averbakh essential series on Endgame or Middle game... Just to give you some ideas where your money would be better spent... Only book that might be worth getting from Pandolfini is the 101 outrageous Fischer moves... How anyone could give this book 4 or 5 stars is beyond me... I guess thats reason some people are so bad at Chess... Try to stick to authors like Emms, Gallagher, Tal, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Fischer, Averbakh, Bronstein and maybe Burgess... Where you spend your money is up to you... If you want to ignore this and get book, thats fine with me... If anything if I face you in a game you will be easier to beat wasting time on this book :)... The real Trap is buying this book, while the Zap is on your wallet :)...
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